


resolution

by taizi



Series: years and years [1]
Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, obligatory New Years shipfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 14:16:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16976136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: He’s all long limbs and loose, lethal grace, bright brown eyes watchful—and Raph wonders how many more of his own mannerisms Casey has adopted in the six years they’ve been friends. The thought goes down like a swig of the champagne April brought over, fizzy and dry and burning a path to his stomach.





	resolution

**Author's Note:**

> This was a present for @chimyen a couple years ago, who wanted some fluffy Rasey on New Year’s. It took me?? So long??? To write this?? ? Also there’s implied Woodyangelo, Apritello and Leosagi, because I’m McFreakin’ weak.
> 
> For no particular reason, the story is set six years into the future. Everyone’s a little older. Also, I have them living in the lair from The Secret of the Ooze, the one based on the real-life City Hall Loop station in Manhattan. Because it’s pretty.

Casey shows up at a little after ten, flushed and windswept, the tips of his ears and the end of his nose bright red with cold. He’s dressed up for the occasion, or as close to it as he’ll come—with a blazer over his hoodie and dark jeans, hair pulled back into a ponytail, and the same pair of tired Chuck Taylors he’ll probably wear to his grave.

His almond-shaped eyes seem to find Raph automatically in the well-lit lair, and that’s the only warning Raph gets before Casey is grinning at him, lopsided and gap-toothed and _ridiculously_ fond.

Holy shit.

Raph feels his face get hot, probably flushing to match his mask, and _he_ doesn’t have winter chill to blame it on. He hides behind his magazine, like a coward.

“Man, you dudes go hard for the holidays,” Casey says by-way of greeting, hopping the steps into the living room and taking a seat next to Raph. He takes in the well-decorated lair for a moment, then nudges Don with the two of his sneaker, where the technical turtle is sitting cross-legged on the floor. “Where did you get all this stuff, anyway?”

“Woody,” the engineer says dryly, without looking up from the tangled string of fairy lights in his lap. Casey expression morphs at once into an _‘I should’ve known’_ as Don goes on. “I swear, Mikey could ask that guy for the _moon_ and have it the next day.”

“That’s not a _bad_ thing,” April retorts, coming out of the kitchen with two steaming mugs. “I think it’s cute.”

She looks soft in socks and worn jeans and an over-sized sweater, her hair pulled up into a messy bun—looks like she’s _home_ , as she steps over Don’s legs and settles on his free side, comfortable in the closeness of their shoulders and knees.

But looks aside, she’s as good as a black-belt in ninjutsu, and her peaceful expression is a little predatory when she adds sweetly, “I’m willing to fight anyone who disagrees.”

“No, thank you.” Don takes a drink from the mug she handed him, smiling his thanks. The steam fogs his glasses, so he pushes them up to his forehead as he asks wryly, “We can still make fun of them, though, right?”

“Of course. What else is family for? Speaking of which—” April turns an appraising glance Casey’s way, eyes bright with humor. “Looking _good_ Jones. Hot date tonight?”

“I always look good,” Casey replies without batting an eye. “I’m a solid _ten_ , Red. But yeah, I was gonna see if Raph wanted to get up to some shit with me.”

Mikey wolf-whistles from the kitchen, and Raph accidentally crushes his magazine. Suddenly it feels like Casey is sitting too close, and his arm, where it’s slung innocuously over the back of the couch, practically draped around Raph’s shoulders, might as well weigh a hundred pounds.

“Well, don’t let us keep you,” Don says mildly, returning to the mess of tangled lights in his hands. His lips pull up into a smirk that it takes knowing him well to recognize. “And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“I’ll kill all of you,” Raph says with feeling, surging to his feet. “Hang on, Jones, lemme get a coat.”

“Sure, babe,” Casey drawls, and laughter follows Raph all the way down the platform to the subway car that serves as his bedroom. It’s only a little humiliating. For all that Raph knows the members of his family—mutant, human or otherwise—are completely incapable of cruelty for cruelty’s sake, sometimes they can be assholes anyway.

But Raph knows all about _that_.

He takes his time getting ready, the only decent payback he can come up with. Usagi and Leo are sitting on the edge of the car they share when Raph finally emerges from his, talking in low voices with warm smiles. They’re the two quietest members of this loud and lively family, but they come alight and alive when they’re alone together.

Raph, sometimes-asshole that he is, tries not to interrupt them as he leaves.

Casey’s waiting for him by the hidden door, and there’s a playful gleam in his eyes that settles Raph’s nerves—the smirk is, somehow, way better than an apology would have been. Raph’s pretty sure that means his standards have officially reached an all-time low.

* * *

It’s always unnerving to take the sidewalk, to walk at a civilian pace and mingle. He’s in enough layers to pass for a thick, short human; scarf wound up to his nose, hat pulled down to his eyes. No one in Manhattan’s going to slow down to gawk at a stranger, anyway—especially not on New Year’s Eve.

For a _hot date_ , it’s not very hot or date-like. Not with Raph bundled up beyond recognition and half a foot of distance maintained between his shoulder and Casey’s. He’s not sure yet if he’s relieved or disappointed—mostly he’s wondering why the hell he _cares_ when it’s obvious his siblings were just screwing with him.

“Where we goin’, anyway?” Raph mutters. Casey shrugs.

“I’ll know it when I see it.”

Casey’s totally unbothered by the crowd, strolling through the busy streets without any particular destination in mind. The people around them crunch noisily through ice and snow, but Casey’s steps are as soundless as Raph’s, a trick he picked up after spending too much time in ninja turtle company.

He’s all long limbs and loose, lethal grace, bright brown eyes watchful—and Raph wonders how many more of his own mannerisms the human has adopted in the six years they’ve been friends. The thought goes down like a swig of the champagne April brought over, fizzy and dry and burning a path to his stomach.

“Here’s good,” Casey says abruptly, and Raph finds himself standing in front of a condemned apartment building.

“Good for _what_?”

Casey ignores him in favor of skirting around the front entrance, plunging into the shadow of the alley on one side. Raph follows without missing a beat, fondly thinking back to his teenage years when he would have grabbed Jones by the ponytail and _yanked_ until he got a straight answer.

But the road between then and now—between 'sixteen and perpetually angry’ and 'twenty-three and occasionally annoyed'—was a long one. Father passed away, and the old lair was lost to a flood after a particularly long and nasty storm, and Casey’s dad started drinking again. April almost dropped out of college twice, trying to juggle everything happening in her friends’ lives with everything happening in her own. An accident in the lab left Donnie half-blind. Karai and Shinigami moved back to Tokyo.

Their family got smaller and then bigger, and things changed and things stayed the same—and throughout it all, everyone grew up. Everyone kind of _had_ to. Raph’s in his twenties now, and his temper is no longer a dangerous fault line, and there are better things to waste his energy on than holding grudges and picking fights.

Better things like watching Casey jump to catch the raised end of a rusted fire escape ladder, miss completely, and land on his ass in the snow. It startles a laugh out of Raph—and he doesn’t catch himself, either, just keeps laughing as Casey picks himself up gingerly.

“You’re an asshole,” Casey says good-naturedly, managing to get the ladder down on his second try. He tests the first step with his foot, and when it holds he hauls himself up unflinchingly, even as the tired metal whines and bows unsteadily under his feet. “C’mon,” he throws over his shoulder. “I got us good seats.”

They climb fourteen stories. Raph could probably scale the side of the wall faster, but it’s more fun to test the ancient fire escape; heart in his throat at every shriek of aged metal, going still when part of the landing starts to give way. 

Casey’s grinning the whole time—like sure, he could die, but he’s made it _this_ far. That’s the whole of everything he is, straightforward and unthinking and hardly ever looking back. He’s still so reckless when it comes to the things and the people he loves—when it comes to hockey, or his little sister, or the mutant family who had adopted him every bit as thoroughly as he had adopted them. 

And it’s not like Raph would let him fall, anyway. 

“Here we go,” Casey says, pulling himself over the raised lip of the roof. He sounds satisfied, turning to give Raph a hand up. Straightening, Raph finally has an idea what Casey was going for 

They’re too far from Times Square to watch the ball drop, but Raph can see the lights and hear the crowds. Casey sits on the edge of the rooftop, and pats the spot next to his. 

Casey and April have never minded the isolation from society that comes as a package deal with the Hamatos’ friendship. In all the years he’s known them, they’ve never complained about missing parties or sitting out events in favor of spending time in a sewer home with a handful of mutants. They’ve skipped school plenty of times for Raph and his brothers—skipped town, too, when a sticky situation came up that made it too dangerous for them to stay in the city. 

And Casey could be down there, if he wanted to. But in the same way that Woody is spending the night with Mikey, and April with Donnie, Casey came and found Raph and dragged him to this spot, where it’s just the two of them sitting apart from the rest of the world. 

Raph blinks. The same way?

Casey settles comfortably, as beneath and away the crowds start to roar. “It’s been a wild year,” he says on the back of a sigh, while a distant countdown begins. “Don’t think there’s anything I’d change though. You?”

It’s their own version of making a wish on the New Year. Looking back, for once, instead of looking forward. And Raph looks back—on this year, and the year before, and the year before that. Tracing his steps back to the night he met this frustrating, impossible stranger, and then tracing them forward again.

"I’m such a moron,” he says abruptly, stunned by his own stupidity. “Holy _shit._ Were you ever gonna _say_ anything?”

Casey stares at him with round almond eyes, lips parted in surprise, for all of a moment. Then he’s grinning, the same way he always has; lopsided and gap-toothed and _ridiculously_ in love. 

“ _Everyone_ knew but me. What the hell. Even _Mikey_ knew before me.”

“To be fair, Mikey was dating before any of the rest of us were, so it’s safe to say he’s got an eye for these things,” Casey replies easily, climbing to his feet. “But we can’t all be as lucky as him and Woods.”

“The hell we can’t,” Raph snaps, face flushed hotly, and Casey’s _laughing_ at him like an _asshole_ when he finally—fucking _finally—_ leans down for a kiss. 

The crowd over in Times Square is cheering loud enough that it carries and carries and carries across the night, and Raph doesn’t give a shit that it’s not for him and pretends it is anyway. It’s bitterly cold, and the sky is beginning to spit snow, and Casey’s still grinning against his mouth. 

“Guess I wouldn’t change anything, either,” Raph mutters grudgingly, leaning in when Casey pulls him closer.

 


End file.
